Monthly Archives: November 2009

By Jonathan Adler Is the NFL taking its Thanksgiving fans for granted? It seems that year after year, the Thanksgiving Day schedule features lousy matchups and even lousier outcomes. This year, America was treated to three supremely boring football games. … Continue reading →

By David Roher “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” So begins Leo Tolstoy’s 1878 masterpiece, Anna Karenina, an engrossing novel about late 19th century statistical analysis in baseball. Or about Russian aristocratic … Continue reading →

By Jonathan Adler Former Kansas City Chiefs RB Larry Johnson was frustrated with his head coach, Todd Haley, and decided to vent via his Twitter account. The former Chief announced to the online community that, “my father got more credentials … Continue reading →

By David Roher Harvard and Yale played their 126th football game (known around these parts simply as “The Game”) yesterday. We elected not to do a preview on the blog because the outcome was obviously a near certainty. However, it … Continue reading →

By John Ezekowitz The beauty of golf lies in its apparent simplicity: the goal is to get the ball in the hole in as few strokes as possible. So many factors go into getting the ball into that hole, however, … Continue reading →

The Washington Post reported two weeks ago that NFL television ratings are the highest they’ve been in 20 years. Obviously, this is good news for business.

The National Football League, as a business, is the king of the sports world. The NFL raked in $7.6 billion in 2008, making it the planet’s richest league. But the NFL, just like any business in a recession, is not immune to downturn. Like the Corleone family had the Tattaglias, the NFL business has its own daunting obstacles.

Possibly the greatest threat to the NFL’s short-term economic stability is the potential lockout in the 2011 season. Let’s take a look at the debate surrounding this impending work stoppage and the history of sports lockouts/strikes to see how NFL business could be affected. Continue reading →